DenverInfill Blog

It's great to see development in this area of town. I live just north of this site and hate walking by a beautiful ballpark on one side and a vacant wasteland on the other. There's a lot of potential in this area so it's good to see the ball start rolling.
 

I hope you're right about the DNC speeding the construction of planned hotels for Downtown Denver. It's something that crossed my mind when Denver's bid was in its early stages. But I'm not sure how much a hotel actually profits from that one week of business.

Do you know the vacancy rate of hotels downtown on any given weekend? Even if we can assume the hotels would be 100% full during the convention, it might not be that big of a boost from business as usual. (I'm not sure where to look those numbers up.)

We all know that constructing a mid-rise building costs tens of millions of dollars. I assume that's why they work so frustratingly slow in making committments to building, and we see projects delayed year after year. The boost in business to Downtown Denver during the Democratic National Convention will be significant, but I don't know if the fraction of that economic surge that any one business could profit from will be on the same scale as the high cost of constructing a hotel. The DNC's impact is temporary; everyone comes for a week, and then they disappear as quickly as they arrived.

Anyway, I hope you are right about the hotels. If you've read the articles about DNC that mentioned business at Convention Center in Denver, you'll know that, thanks to the Convention Center, the population of conventiongoers is increasing dramatically in Denver each year, and several conventions a year attract more than 10,000 people. That's steady and reliable growth, even without any huge media-busting, one-time conventions like the DNC. That alone should be the biggest incentive for hotels to go forward with their construction plans as soon as possible.
 

I should edit my anonymous post above since I was referring to the development on 22nd and Blake. But nontheless - it's also exciting to get national pub like a convention as well. Woo hoo..! Go Donkeys!
 

The way that the DNC will bring business isn't the DNC itself, but that it really puts Denver on the map for holding huge conventions. And if the DNC works out well and Denver is liked, then we can see more and more large named conventions coming in, which means more hotels to hold those people...

And I think hotel vacancy rates in downtown are pretty low during the week (I don't know about weekends). It's always a pain to get reservations for workmates coming in to the office here.
 

Big news for sure. I hope that city officials seriously study pedestrian access surrounding The Can and how to make Auraria and Speer boulevards less formidable. You take your life in your hands trying to cross Speer already; won't be nice to see a delegate splattered on the pavement because Denver didn't do something about crosswalks, etc.
 

Anonymous (of 1/11, 6:21 pm) is right: it's very hard for people to cross these thoroughfares on foot. How about a (well-designed) pedestrian bridge or two to cross them? How about getting the fine folks who own the Pepsi Center to kick in some cash to pay for same? Not only would it help the delegates in 2008, but it would help all those Avs and Nuggets fans that are constantly crossing those streets, and I'm thinking it would also improve the experience for Grand Prix-goers every August (speaking of which, won't the 2008 Grand Prix collide with the convention in terms of timing?).
 

Certainly something must be done about access to and from the Pepsi Center. Speer & Auraria are not the only problems there. Visitors to Downtown often complain about the "cockeyed" streets in comparison to the adjacent layout, and the walkways and streets connecting Downtown/LoDo and Auraria/Pepsi Center are not intuitive at all. It would behoove them to put in some kind of temporary (bordering on permanent) shuttle service from the Downtown hotels to the Pepsi Center--that much pedestrian traffic all day will certainly cause problems otherwise.
 

Ultimately, whatever is done around Speer and Auraria needs to reflect the recomendations included in the Downtown Area Plan. While the DNC is a great event, it is a onetime event and whatever improvements go in need to take that into account. I believe the needs of the Auraria Campus should be the foremost consideration as plans are developed to increase connectivity between the Pepsi Center, Auraria, and the rest of downtown.
 

For security reasons, wouldn't portions of Speer, 14th Street and Auraria Parkway be closed during key hours of the convention? The whole area could be a pedestrian zone.

The North End of Boston was nearly closed down during the last convention.
 

I think the DNC will help with Denver's publicity, sure the extra economic boost is only temporary, but it will show off the amenities of our city, and will hopefully attract some organizations to locate more regional offices in the Queen City of the Plains.